Forget to Remember
by CAHLAY
Summary: Cindy has suffered immensely in some unspoken horror. The problem is, she refuses to talk about what has happened to her. Jimmy thinks he can be of help, but both teenagers soon find out how little they really know about each other. M for later chapters.


Howdy doody folks. Here I bring you a story I wrote several years back. Recently, while apparently on drugs I found it and added some to it. It is about an innocent little kids show you might have seen called The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron. I don't own any of these characters, I just borrowed them and assigned them terrible fates. Read with an open mind, this is going to get quite dark, bear with me. Don't like it, don't read it. Review if you please. Thanksleys, CARL.

c-

Dear Diary,

I did it again. I want to stop- really, I do. O wish I could tell mom everything without her correcting me. So, you weren't even there. How do you know what happened that night? I keep trying to look forward instead of living in that horrible few hours, but it is so impossible. So I cut myself. Seems so cliché, right, queen teen angst over here, slicing herself up like a Virginia Ham every other night. But its me. So this is the stereotype of high school girl I've fallen into. Seems strange in terms of how I was in the past. We never turn out the way we thought we would.

As I made my daily mad dash downstairs, I ran my fingers through my long blonde hair. I had long ago stopped putting it in that ridiculous pony tail. That was in sixth grade, after losing a violent game of "king of the hill."

It had been a beautiful sunny day out. Over at the outer edge of the playground I saw many kids fighting for control of the hill. Seeing here my opportunity to prove how tough I could be, being a girl, I ran right over to join in. I climbed that hill, lusting after the top, toppling over anyone in my way as I made my way up. I felt victory as queen of the hill, it came closer, until someone yanked hard on my ponytail.

I fell ass over tea kettle back down to the bottom. More angry than hurt I whirled around to see everyone laughing hysterically and high-fiving… Jimmy? Tears immediately rushed to my eyes, in typical girlish fashion. Despite this, I began to trek back up that stupid mound of dirt only to have my pony tail pulled again and again. I fell, and fell, and got back up and tried again. This was of course to no avail.

Jimmy was walking off the hill towards me, his face filled with all sorts of regret. He intended to help me up and no doubt apologize. Before he even got close to me, I helped myself to my feet, glaring at him the entire time, and turned to run away, far away from that corner of the playground, crying the whole time.

Ever since that day, I have never worn my hair in a pony tail. Most days it is wound in a tight braid down my back. Today, however, I stopped to read last night's diary entry, to see if anything written then made any sense now. It didn't. School time crept up on me and I was walking downstairs, grabbing an apple on my way out the door to catch the bus.

Jimmy was standing across the street, absentmindedly writing something on his hand. I smiled in spite of myself. He looked far different that he had in sixth grade. He was taller than me, and had finally grown into his huge head. His hair was long and shaggy in the most brilliant way, as he didn't seem to pay attention to it. Over a plain black t-shirt he wore a flannel shirt with old and worn jeans ending in equally dirty red-colored Converse high tops. I got closer, preparing an insult as I reached the end of my driveway.

"Hey flannel boy," I yelled across the street to him. He looked up, seeming amused more than offended. "Grunge died in the nineties, ya know."

He smirked a little bit, and in his smile was the faintest look I'd grown to love and hate. He returned to writing on his hand, and I was a bit sad that he hadn't insulted me back in his usual fashion. Other than insults, we rarely talked to each other. It was the strangest thing and had been like that since forever ago.

Curiosity got the best of me and I walked up next to him, asking, "Whatcha writing?"

Jimmy held the palm of his had facing me. It had a ridiculously long equation written all over it, and I wondered why he hadn't just put it down on paper. "It's an equation I was assigned to write for trigonometry class."

"Did you run out of paper or something?"

"No," he said, smiling his smile at me. Blue eyes made me melt. "Honestly I forgot all about it until this morning."

"Scatterbrain. Why all up on your hand, though? What's with that?"

Jimmy grinned again. He looked back, in a few directions, almost as if expecting someone to be watching. "Well," he began, as if it were a really long story. "All my notebooks went missing, believe it or not. So maybe I did run out of paper, I guess. Anyway I know you always have a notebook or whatever and I was going to ask you or something to borrow it…" He trailed off, and I got the notion that he wanted to ask me for more than just a notebook.

"Sure." Digging into my messenger bag, I heard the bus coming up on us. I handed him a random notebook, probably with random shit written in it, and he nodded me a thank you. We got on the bus, to go off to Retroville High.

I sat by myself, as usual. Libby officially hated my guts. The reason was a stupid one. Evil Bratz doll Betty Quinlan had spread the worst rumor ever about us is seventh grade. For some reason she told the world we were lesbians and would dyke out at my house. All of this was totally untrue, of course, but it nonetheless caused tension between Libby and I. We got in a fight, I haven't really talked to her since.

I watched Libby and Sheen together on the bus seat. They were making out heavily, the bus driver noticed and was irritated but did nothing to stop it. Jimmy sat in the seat directly in front of me with Carl, who had thinned out some. Nobody said anything to me, not that I minded or had anything to say back, of course, and soon enough we were at Retroville High.

Everyone filed off the bus and into the brick building. Immediately I ostracized myself, going to sit in a corner of a hallway somewhere until the bell rang and I could make my way to Spanish class. Sadly I touched my arm, which was covered by the sleeve of a black button up shirt. I was in the process of unbuttoning my sleeve to check the damage when a red sneaker came into my view. The toecaps of Jimmy's chucks had random shit written all over them, courtesy of Sheen and Carl. I craned my head up to look at him.

"What?"

"Just giving this back," he said, kneeling down and looking at me in that way I really loved. I took my random notebook and jammed it into my bag. Starting to get up, we shared our look, that look that had been uniquely ours for years.

"Anything else?" I asked when I was standing, facing him.

"Well yeah. Kinda. Want to go to the Candy Bar with me after school today?" He asked quickly, for fear of rejection. But of course. I thought.

"No way," I answered sarcastically, and he laughed nervously. "Pick me up after school mkay?"

And it was too perfect. He seemed so goddamned happy about it. As if I wouldn't say yes to that. Well no. Not at all you sexy boy toy. For a change I felt really nice. We had our ups and downs. Loves and hates in our strained relationship going in endless cycles. Today was like any other day, maybe he'd asked me out before, we always got in a strange argument and were furious with each other for no real reason. That was just how it was between us.

Not to mention Jimmy's friends had ostracized me for the simple fact that, back last year, my hangout was with Nick's friends. And I shuddered at that thought. Last year, although I fought to keep the memories out, had been traumatic. It was my little secret kept close to my heartstrings, distressing me greatly, but no one knew what had really happened back then. All anyone saw was my black clothes and my makeup.

I waved goodbye to Jimmy as I started toward my third year of Spanish class.

j-

I walked downstairs and grabbed a cereal bar from mom. Last night Cindy and I had hung out for the first time in a while. It went well, and she was only mildly bitchy throughout our excursion.

"How was your date with Cindy?" Mom asked, the lines in her face and grays in her hair appearing more prominently from the worried expression on her face. It was obvious what she was thinking. We were back too late. Sure.

"It wasn't a date. But we had fun, yeah."

"Did you…" she drifted off midsentence, and I unfortunately knew what she was asking. Not to say that I wouldn't have nailed Cindy to the wall if given a chance, but it simply wasn't like that. The whole relationship we had was deeply entrenched inside something like complicated aggravation. I loved her.

"No mom, we're friends." I rolled my eyes at her, but her look didn't subside. She was worse for the wear lately, with dad appearing much less and much later at night. The house was strained, albeit its exterior appearance, which remained the same.

"Good. Good. Have a nice day at school, Jimmy," Mom said in her usual bland tone. All this had changed since last year, with dad's sudden interest in late-night drinking at the bars and pubs downtown.

"Yep." I ambled out the front door, feeling immediately relieved leaving the tense atmosphere of the walls of my house. Across the street, Cindy's pink house looked the same as it always had. I was sure something had changed within her house though, too, it was subtle. The changes within Cindy were a reflection of something else. I had noticed. It was different.

The night before had been perfect. We had spent most of it just laying on the grass with each other. Cindy had listened to me blabber on about science, mostly to avoid a strained silence and opportunity for her to get bitchy again.

The door to her house opened, and she came out slowly and miserably. Something was immediately wrong with her body language at seeing me, and I knew this set the stage for the day. Woke up on the wrong side of the catbox.

"How's it going?" I asked as she got closer. Her pretty eyes were encased in too much blue eyeshadow. I wished she would wear less makeup.

"Shitty. My parents think we had sex last night and put me through the talking to of my whole little lifetime," she said with a heavy scowl on her face. It made no sense.

"What makes them think that? Did I drop you off too late?" I stepped closer to her and realized she had been crying before applying her layers of foundation and powder. Under the mask that had been Cindy, her skin was pale and expression irritated.

"They're so horrible. It's a bad deal," Cindy replied, not looking at me, with her hands crossed over her typically black shirt. Her black skirt was very short and her legs were covered in fishnets, with combat boots. "They think I'm that sort of girl, you know the type," she looked at me with a slightly annoyed suggestion on her face. "All we did was sit and talk. And, just for that, my parents flipped the fuck out on me this morning. It was awesome."

I didn't know what to say to that, other than, "Why?"

This was the wrong question to ask, as Cindy glared at me, her eyes piercing into me with some sort of frustration. "That's just 'how they are.' Sure, they only want the best for me. Yeah right. What the hell do they know? They listen to the wrong people anyway…" She trailed off. Her eyes glossed over with tears as she stared across the street at her pink house. She seemed to be talking more to herself than to me.

Cindy had been like this for quite some time now. Shortly after Nick had broken up with her and moved away last year, she had become slightly different. Colder, more angry, with lots more black clothes and a lot less to say to people. Her parents seemed to have changed slightly, as had mine with my fathers newfound taste for alcohol.

"All I can say is I know we didn't do anything last night. That should be good enough, right?" I said in my most consoling tone of voice.

"Sure. Good enough," She muttered, rolling her eyes. The bus pulled up just in time for us to sit quietly on our way to school. At times it felt like forever.

END CHAPTER 1...

So what did you think? I hope I covered what is going on a little bit, made you think, without being too long winded. I shaved off a couple of pages that weren't totally relevant, making this a shorter and hopefully more comprehensive read. It gets pretty dark and twisted. Bear with me. Review. Or don't. Or send me cookies. It's up to you.

xoxo

Carl.


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